TCU in Rose Bowl a giant leap even for Horned Frogs faithful

It was New Year's Eve of 1998 and Eric Hyman, Texas Christian's athletic director, was having his hangover in advance.

Somehow the Horned Frogs were in the Sun Bowl, playing USC.

"I was a little more paranoid than usual," recalled Hyman, now the AD at South Carolina.

In his mind Hyman saw Charles White, Ricky Bell and Marcus Allen turning the day into a sprint-relay race, and he saw TCU, having scrambled to this plateau, running for its life on national TV.

Hyman got into the AD's box and sat with no one but his family. He watched the Frogs score. "Good, we'll only lose, 54-7," he said. Then they scored again. And again.

It was 21-3 at halftime.

A bowl official knocked.

"I'm sorry we couldn't provide you more of a game," he told Hyman, who was too discombobulated to laugh.

Eventually TCU won, 28-19. TCU people believe that day led to this Saturday, when football saints such as Sammy Baugh and Davey O'Brien will look down and blink at deep purple in the Rose Bowl, as the Horned Frogs play Wisconsin.

"A bunch of us came out there to do some advance work," said Malcolm Louden, a member of the board of trustees. "We were standing on that Rose Bowl field and I couldn't believe it. And I thought, 'You know, it really is a bowl.'

"But throughout the trip we'd just look at each other and say, 'We're going to the Rose Bowl.' It really is amazing."

The football part of it really isn't so amazing, because TCU has won 37 of its past 39 regular season games and, this year, beat Baylor, Utah, Brigham Young and Air Force by a total of 144 points.

"He's got a knack for spotting talent," Hyman said. "He can tell which high school player has peaked, and which one has a lot of upside."

Its quarterback, Andy Dalton, who has won 51 games since his junior year in high school and was no recruiting secret. He played for Katy, the state runner-up, and was Houston's player of the year. If Texas had Dalton it surely would be bowling somewhere.

But there were times when TCU has had nothing, including hope.

TCU won 17 games in a 10-year period beginning in 1978. That Sun Bowl victory was its first in 41 years.

Then the beloved Southwest Conference shattered, with the big schools joining the Big 12 (and taking Baylor along). TCU was left hanging, without its yearly dates with Texas or A&M.

Louden and Bill Koehler, the provost who later ran the Fort Worth school board, got together and formed a secret project called "Operation Leapfrog." They mapped out a plan to shake up facilities and promote academics, and not just for intercollegiate athletics.

They interviewed Hyman, who was at Miami of Ohio. Hyman came to Fort Worth and noticed that the football team basically had to walk across campus to practice and that the baseball team had no stadium at hand. (The baseball team is preseason No. 1 this year.)

"I called my wife and said, 'This is a gold mine,''' Hyman said.

At the very least, an oil field.

TCU still gets royalties from oil holdings, and there is a ton of money in Fort Worth, Dallas' more refined cousin. TCU's endowment was $1.2 billion before the recession, and, for the stadium expansion in 2008, nine donors approached the school and supplied $13 million.

"Eric came down here and kicked butt," Louden said. "And, in his office, he had every sports lined up on a board and he had a coaching candidate listed for each one, in case we lost a coach."

Hyman replaced Pat Sullivan with Dennis Franchione, who coached in that Sun Bowl. When Franchione went to Alabama, Hyman promoted defensive coordinator Peterson.

But the Frogs found themselves playing musical conferences. "Let's see, we were in the 16-man WAC," Hyman said. "And then eight of those teams left. We were in Conference USA. Finally the Mountain West took us in, and that's been fantastic for us."

Now TCU has joined the Big East, even though it is neither.

"I look at Baylor, and they're a small, church-affiliated school like us," Louden said. "They stayed with the SWC schools. They haven't had near the success in football than we have, although they were good this year (and lost to TCU, 45-10). Losing the SWC was hard, but it was a wakeup call."

Most of TCU's 75,000 living alumni will be wide awake at 2 p.m. Saturday. And at 2 a.m. Sunday, if all goes well.

"We're gonna come out there and paint that Rose Bowl purple," Louden said, laughing at the thought of no one laughing.

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